The early Lombardic, Veronese, and Norman work is the exact reverse of this; being divided first into large masses, and these masses covered with minute chasing and surface work, which fill them with interest, and yet do not disturb nor divide their greatness. The lights are kept broad and bright, and yet are found on near approach to be charged with intricate design. This, again, is a part of the great system of treatment which I shall hereafter call "Proutism;" much of what is thought mannerism and imperfection in Prout's work, being the result of his determined resolution that minor details shall never break up his large masses of light.
§ XXX. Such are the main principles to be observed in the adaptation of ornament to the sight. We have lastly to inquire by what method, and in what quantities, the ornament, thus adapted to mental contemplation, and prepared for its physical position, may most wisely be arranged. I think the method ought first to be considered, and the quantity last; for the advisable quantity depends upon the method.
§ XXXI. It was said above, that the proper treatment or arrangement of ornament was that which expressed the laws and ways of Deity. Now, the subordination of visible orders to each other, just noted, is one expression of these. But there may also--must also--be a subordination and obedience of the parts of each order to some visible law, out of itself, but having reference to itself only (not to any upper order): some law which shall not oppress, but guide, limit, and sustain.
In the tenth chapter of the second volume of "Modern Painters," the reader will find that I traced one part of the beauty of God's creation to the expression of a _self_-restrained liberty: that is to say, the image of that perfection of _divine_ action, which, though free to work in arbitrary methods, works always in consistent methods, called by us Laws.
Now, correspondingly, we find that when these natural objects are to become subjects of the art of man, their perfect treatment is an image of the perfection of _human_ action: a voluntary submission to divine law.
It was suggested to me but lately by the friend to whose originality of thought I have before expressed my obligations, Mr. Newton, that the Greek pediment, with its enclosed sculptures, represented to the Greek mind the law of Fate, confining human action within limits not to be overpassed. I do not believe the Greeks ever distinctly thought of this; but the instinct of all the human race, since the world began, agrees in some expression of such limitation as one of the first necessities of good ornament.[72] And this expression is heightened, rather than diminished, when some portion of the design slightly breaks the law to which the rest is subjected; it is like expressing the use of miracles in the divine government; or, perhaps, in slighter degrees, the relaxing of a law, generally imperative, in compliance with some more imperative need--the hungering of David. How eagerly this special infringement of a general law was sometimes sought by the mediæval workmen, I shall be frequently able to point out to the reader; but I remember just now a most curious instance, in an archivolt of a house in the Corte del Remer close to the Rialto at Venice. It is composed of a wreath of flower-work--a constant Byzantine design--with an animal in each coil; the whole enclosed between two fillets. Each animal, leaping or eating, scratching or biting, is kept nevertheless strictly within its coil, and between the fillets. Not the shake of an ear, not the tip of a tail, overpasses this appointed line, through a series of some five-and-twenty or thirty animals; until, on a sudden, and by mutual consent, two little beasts (not looking, for the rest, more rampant than the others), one on each side, lay their small paws across the enclosing fillet at exactly the same point of its course, and thus break the continuity of its line. Two ears of corn, or leaves, do the same thing in the mouldings round the northern door of the Baptistery at Florence.